The decapitated snowman
at the corner of Everett and 12th
is bold, but not as
evocative as the red-nosed reindeer
strung up for cleaning
just past the old Catholic church.
Perhaps not as showy, I’ve been
building a little gingerbread Chernobyl
in my basement. I’ve used Sour Patch
Kids for the Russians.
They glow like Christmas lights.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
June 18, 2009
Waiting here in the hallway
that connects pods A and B
of the Beutel Student Health Center
I can feel my enlarged heart
galloping. I can see
the tired valves flapping.
I can hear the syncopated
palpitation that worries my
middle-aged doctress.
The smoker’s cough of the
triage nurse reminds me
that I am the only one who hears.
I wonder now, in the co-ed
next to me, the khaki man down the hall,
and the Arabic couple whispering to my right,
what secret songs do their bodies sing?
What local disaster are they hiding?
A flood? An eruption? The quiet death
of a poorly constructed machine,
flashing its last convulsive lights?
that connects pods A and B
of the Beutel Student Health Center
I can feel my enlarged heart
galloping. I can see
the tired valves flapping.
I can hear the syncopated
palpitation that worries my
middle-aged doctress.
The smoker’s cough of the
triage nurse reminds me
that I am the only one who hears.
I wonder now, in the co-ed
next to me, the khaki man down the hall,
and the Arabic couple whispering to my right,
what secret songs do their bodies sing?
What local disaster are they hiding?
A flood? An eruption? The quiet death
of a poorly constructed machine,
flashing its last convulsive lights?
June 17, 2009
Driving south on Highway 6
I saw three freshly turned
mounds of earth in a roadside graveyard.
In the cool evening rain
the soil was still thick
and black, the flowers still crisp and yellow,
and the graves, so close
together could only mean that they knew each other.
They died together.
And I thought, if I died, you would bury me.
If you died, I would bury you,
but if we both died together, would
we know the hands that pushed
the first mound of dirt on our coffins?
Would we care?
Would we remember?
I saw three freshly turned
mounds of earth in a roadside graveyard.
In the cool evening rain
the soil was still thick
and black, the flowers still crisp and yellow,
and the graves, so close
together could only mean that they knew each other.
They died together.
And I thought, if I died, you would bury me.
If you died, I would bury you,
but if we both died together, would
we know the hands that pushed
the first mound of dirt on our coffins?
Would we care?
Would we remember?
June 16, 2009
I will not cut it
short and stubbly
like your cologne
advertisements.
I will not cut it
in wild designs
like your desperate
musicians and filmmakers.
I will not cut it
so neat and comely
that my face would be
remiss without it.
I will cut it once, without warning,
delight in your faces,
then wake the next morning refusing to shave.
short and stubbly
like your cologne
advertisements.
I will not cut it
in wild designs
like your desperate
musicians and filmmakers.
I will not cut it
so neat and comely
that my face would be
remiss without it.
I will cut it once, without warning,
delight in your faces,
then wake the next morning refusing to shave.
June 15, 2009
It is always in
the deepest holes of the night
those moments just before
the sun and long after
this little orange slice has gone to bed
that I walk the empty halls
of this house and wonder
what is next.
These anxious moments
so full of potential and promise
buzz around me such that
I can barely sleep.
But when I do and then subsequently wake,
I am as dull as the previous morning.
What I would give to bottle these
nighttime bees, open them
in the morning,
let them sting me to greatness.
the deepest holes of the night
those moments just before
the sun and long after
this little orange slice has gone to bed
that I walk the empty halls
of this house and wonder
what is next.
These anxious moments
so full of potential and promise
buzz around me such that
I can barely sleep.
But when I do and then subsequently wake,
I am as dull as the previous morning.
What I would give to bottle these
nighttime bees, open them
in the morning,
let them sting me to greatness.
June 14, 2009
Benjamin Franklin was 81
when he signed the Constitution.
It is said that when he did so,
tears streamed down his face.
His body, so deteriorated from gout,
required a younger man to hold
his hand as he wrote.
Barely able to walk, Franklin was
carried to and from the hall by four
prisoners from the Walnut Street jail.
Is it such a stretch to imagine
that the same man who carried him
would serve as his aide?
Is it such a stretch to imagine that out
of the thirty-nine signers, one held
the heart of a founding father, but
the strength of a convict?
Did he know what history he pushed as he guided
that liver spot hand?
when he signed the Constitution.
It is said that when he did so,
tears streamed down his face.
His body, so deteriorated from gout,
required a younger man to hold
his hand as he wrote.
Barely able to walk, Franklin was
carried to and from the hall by four
prisoners from the Walnut Street jail.
Is it such a stretch to imagine
that the same man who carried him
would serve as his aide?
Is it such a stretch to imagine that out
of the thirty-nine signers, one held
the heart of a founding father, but
the strength of a convict?
Did he know what history he pushed as he guided
that liver spot hand?
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
June 13, 2009
I’ve pulled six books
from my shelves in hopes
that one would yield a poem.
A Concise Encyclopedia, Pauline Brown’s Guide to Beginning Patchwork, a small bound edition of the U.S. Constitution, Seamus Heaney’s translation of “Beowulf,” Peter Irons’ Jim Crow’s Children—a discussion of the Brown decision, and a New Living Translation of the Holy Bible.
Surely in these poems and proverbs, these
facts and fabrics, these laws and their
verdicts, there is a short verse worth my ink.
And when I find it, I will be sure
to send it your way. A little lateral
literacy to enlighten your lives.
And if it bends the eye the way my
grandfather once claimed I could bend the ear
then my poem will not be an end in itself
but a beginning and a beginning and a beginning.
from my shelves in hopes
that one would yield a poem.
A Concise Encyclopedia, Pauline Brown’s Guide to Beginning Patchwork, a small bound edition of the U.S. Constitution, Seamus Heaney’s translation of “Beowulf,” Peter Irons’ Jim Crow’s Children—a discussion of the Brown decision, and a New Living Translation of the Holy Bible.
Surely in these poems and proverbs, these
facts and fabrics, these laws and their
verdicts, there is a short verse worth my ink.
And when I find it, I will be sure
to send it your way. A little lateral
literacy to enlighten your lives.
And if it bends the eye the way my
grandfather once claimed I could bend the ear
then my poem will not be an end in itself
but a beginning and a beginning and a beginning.
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